Salish Sea Pocketship

 I milled up a pile of western cedar boards for use as the cabin sole.  It's mostly knot free and the knots I have are small-ish.   Here is the port side roughed in.    

 While I wait for my hull epoxy to dry I'm going to get started on the floorboards.  I've got a number of large planks of western cedar that I'm going to use.  First I have to mill these 3-in x 15-in x 10-ft planks down to size.

 Finally done with the inside hull fiberglassing.  As you can see, I'm following the steps suggested by Brent's blog and doing alot of work on the lower hull before installing the sides.   Getting these areas around the floor boards glassed was hard enough - not sure I could have gotten there if the sides were on. I also did a variation on the way I glassed between the floors. First I put glass in each corner.  I actually used a bigger piece that extended farther toward the center of the centerboard. Then I glassed the sides of each floor board with it extending out over the hull panel.  Finally I laid a wide strip down the center.   This took longer, but was much easier to lay down.  The first section I tried using a single sheet and total messed it up.  This worked well.

 Fillets and sanding is done.  Now to lay some fiberglass.  I started at the bow and proceeded aft.

 I finally have all the floors and bulkheads wired down, straight and true.  Now its time to get the fillets down.  I did a test fillet using peel ply and really like the result, so I'm going to be using this where I can. I'm holding off right now on installing bulkheads 1 and 2.  I haven't decided yet if installing these bulkheads when I do the side panels will be the best way to approach this build.

    When I installed BH7, I made it square with the centerboard case - or at least that was what I attempted to do. The BH wasn't aligning very well with the cradle, but since that seems to be one of the most common complaints others have posted about, I wasn't too concerned. I epoxied it in and everything was looking good until I started adding the other bulkheads.  I just could not seem to get BH8 to line up correctly and still be in the wire holes in the hull panels.        I even put a laser level to the hull to check for alignment and twist.  All looked fine.                   So I started to look at the alignment from a different perspective.  If I wired in BH8 using the provided holes, then measure from the bulkhead to the aft end, I could see that the BH was parallel with the aft hull.  Measuring the gap between BH8 and BH7 and I found a 3/4-inch difference between the starboard and po...

 I want the hull to be nice and smooth going thru the water, so I'm taking extra care to ensure the hull panels all meet properly.  I wired the 2 hull panels to the keelson and was able to get a nice smooth outside line everywhere but at the cradles.  For some reason the cradles were keeping the hull panels sticking up a good 1/8 inch from the keelson edge. You can see here that there is a good step between the hull panel and the keelson.  I tried adding more wires and tried using screws to pring them in line - all no good. Finally I thought to jack up the aft end of the boat - and that created enough room so I could press these two panels together for a smooth outside line. I had the same bulge problem at the bow.  To fix them both, I added a 1/16 inch shim where the keel meets the cradle.  Problem solved. This also improved the layout of the bulkheads, eliminating a small gap between the hull and the BH bottom.